Read this Bryan Caplan post, it's short and direct. His thesis is:

You can learn a lot by comparing the mood reasonable proponents would hold to the mood actual proponents do hold.

I could quibble, but at the very least this heuristic has caused me to have new thoughts. Here are some of them:

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Missing the mood: Effective Altruism should avoid getting embroiled in standard conflicts over politics & public policy. Political battles have especially low tractability, and often have reputational costs that are hard to predict.

Not missing the mood: Moloch yet controls the national/state/local budgets, the campaigns, the military agenda, the news landscape, the taxes and subsidies, the zoning laws, the immigration laws, the financial regulations, and so on. Tragically, we cannot do much about this yet, and if we tried, there would be a great risk of backfire. So we will continue to focus our efforts on more tractable causes, but always with a watchful eye toward the political landscape in case Moloch’s grip slips.

Missing the mood: If we didn’t have the current education system, some kids might not receive [some hazy, questionable benefit]. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater! See part V of this ACX post.

Not missing the mood: Yes, huge amounts of childhood flourishing and human potential could be salvaged if we had an ideal school system. Yes, our existing school system does instill a lifelong dislike of math, writing, history, etc. for many (or even most) students. But Chesteron's fence and several other heuristics suggest that if we simply tore town the current system and distributed the money back to the public, everything might be even worse. Ponder this fact: if you drop a random US high school graduate in a random US city, they will be able to read road signs to get to the transit center, and then mentally compare--quantitatively--the costs of getting home. That kind of literacy and numeracy is a big deal, and it is our system of compulsory schooling that lets us take it for granted. And no, this is not a mundane tradeoff--the direct cost to an individual student is horrendous. But this is the price of modernity. Perhaps we ought to have school assemblies explaining this tradeoff to the students, and honoring their sacrifice and endurance. Perhaps we ought to beg kids for their patience and understanding every single day that we send them to school....

Missing Moods